Human Rights and the Protection of Domestic Workers in Labour and Migration Law

Abstract

This book examines the legal protection of domestic workers, who carry out essential and undervalued labour such as cooking, cleaning, and care for children and the elderly in private households, drawing on case studies of Chile, the UK, South Africa, and India. It analyses how deficits in protection arise from gaps in formal coverage of labour law standards, a lack of enforcement of labour law standards, and vulnerabilities constructed by migration law regimes. The book makes a distinctive and positive case for the role of human rights in extending protection to domestic workers, criticizing gaps in their protection based on the right to private and family life, the right to work, and the prohibition on forced labour.

The book combines rigorous doctrinal analysis of domestic legal frameworks and international human rights jurisprudence with detailed empirical research, which generates a rich picture of the interaction of legal regulation with domestic workers’ lived positions. The normative critique and empirical findings are used to make the case for reform of labour and migration law to provide specialist and targeted forms of protection for domestic workers. The book’s proposals include an extension of inspection into the domestic sphere with specified constraints, wage increases reflecting human rights principles of fair pay, improved protection for working time based on respect for domestic workers’ private and family lives, a modification of visa regimes, and a separation between employment regulation and immigration enforcement.